


Forty-one minutes

by museaway



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Angst, Confrontation, Jealousy, M/M, Trying again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 08:58:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museaway/pseuds/museaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He opens the door with a beer in hand. Zach's eyes are hidden behind infuriating sunglasses and an infuriating hat, and he's wearing god-awful blue shorts and an ugly shirt. Chris's traitorous heart speeds up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forty-one minutes

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [四十一分钟](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162261) by [SilentBridge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentBridge/pseuds/SilentBridge)



> I have apparently written Pinto. This is a standalone, but I might (eventually) add on to it. Thanks for understanding my need to write something not-quite Trek. Hugs to Juno and Jouissant, the enablers they are.

It's the smell of the soil that gets him. There's something so clean about it, even under his nails and ingrained in his fingertips. Doesn't matter how many times he scrubs them, that smell lingers for hours. He catches it when he wipes his nose, bites his cuticles and tears one. He sucks until he doesn't taste the blood anymore, pours peroxide over his thumb. He hisses at the sting, watches it bubble, blows the hurt away. He dries his hand on a towel.

He glances at his phone, taps the screen to check the time. 

Forty-one minutes. 

With a fist, he beats away the weird feeling in his chest, breathes in hard. Squeezes his eyes closed and exhales through an o-shaped mouth. How long's it been? He's lost track. He kept meaning to get to New York, and Zach kept texting about the weather in London, but with their work-logged schedules it just didn't work out. Which was better anyway, right? With Zach on set, they would've acted like kids, probably blown a day of shooting to hell. Then Chris would've been pissed at himself, taken it out on Zach, and they would've gone another two months without speaking.

He presses his lips into a line and looks, really looks at himself in the bathroom mirror. He looks better since he's been home, less zombie-like. There's less purple beneath his eyes, but the beard is still coming in gray. Makeup can do wonders, but fuck if he's wearing it off set. That's what two franchises in so many years will get you, he tells himself. He's glad for a couple weeks off. Of course, that means everyone wants to see him: come to parties, come to dinner, just come over and catch up over beer. Sounds damned selfish to say he'd rather be a shut in, weed the garden, stretch out next to the pool, take a swim, let the air dry his skin as he falls into a lazy summer-sun nap. But that's what he tells them.

Most of all, he wants to be alone. No audience, no commentary, no cameras. 

The phone's screen has dimmed to half brightness; it goes dark while he watches.

Thirty-eight minutes.

He leans his palms against the edge of the bathroom counter and goes cross eyed staring at the drain. He has no idea how this is going to play out. Zach said he was going to be in town. He'd swing by. Chris almost told him no, just don't, but he never sent that message. They'll eat lunch, catch up, promise to stay in touch. Zach will leave, and Chris will spend the next twenty-four hours in bed, watching TV listlessly until he feels like his body has actually become part of the mattress. He'll eventually get up, shower, and categorically ignore Zach's text messages for days. When he writes back, it'll be one-word answers. And no way in hell is he going to log into Instagram again. All Zach posts is pretentious bullshit, not like Chris knows that first hand or anything.

Thirty-five minutes.

He should probably do something, straighten up—not too much. Just straighten the stacks of books slowly encroaching on the couch. He meant to go through his collection, weed out giveaways, but it turned into a reunion. He slumps onto the couch amidst the clutter and runs both hands through his hair. He props a foot up on the coffee table, catching sight of the dirt on his ankle. There's still time to grab a shower, but instead he leans his head against the back of the couch and counts backwards.

Twenty-nine.

Twenty-eight.

***

He opens the door with a beer in hand. Zach's eyes are hidden behind infuriating sunglasses and an infuriating hat, and he's wearing god-awful blue shorts and an ugly shirt. Chris's traitorous heart speeds up.

"Hey," he says flatly and walks back into the house. He hears Zach close the front door, wonders for a second if he changed his mind and left, but he hears the tug and slide of a jacket being removed and Zach's surprisingly light footsteps coming up behind him. Chris stands at the kitchen sink. He finishes the beer in another two sips and sets the bottle down.

"You want one?" he offers, opening the fridge and taking out two bottles even though Zach hasn't answered him. He pops them open and slides one to Zach, drinking deeply.

"To your health," he manages between sips. Zach fingers the bottle, frowning as he looks Chris up and down.

"You look like shit," he says finally.

"I was working in the yard."

"Mmm," Zach replies. He takes a drawn-out sip of beer, hovering the bottle at his mouth longer than strictly necessary. Chris looks away. "Too bad there aren't people you can hire to do that for you."

"How's New York?" Chris asks instead of engaging him. He's aware that he sounds petulant. 

"How's London?" Zach counters, taking another sip. "And _Paris_?"

"London was a job," Chris mutters.

"So's Broadway. Thanks for coming to see the show, by the way."

"Yeah, no problem," Chris says icily. "And I'm glad you called all those times, like you said you would." 

Zach sighs and wraps both hands around the bottle. "Are we gonna do this?" he asks. "Is this honestly what we're going to do all afternoon?"

"At least I called you."

"Yes, you did," Zach mutters. 

"Was he pissed?" Chris asks, recalling the muffled tone of a second voice the last time he'd called Zach after midnight. Zach gives him a tired look.

"What do you think?" he asks after a minute. 

"I think," Chris says slowly, frowning at the bottle in his hand and clenching his jaw, "that we should go outside. It's nice in the garden."

Zach's face softens. "Okay," he says.

***

Zach sits on a crooked lounge chair. Chris dips his feet in the pool. The water's cold; it's been cloudy for two days and he hasn't bothered with the solar cover. His skin prickles when he first submerges his legs, but after a few seconds it's not so bad, feels almost warm, maybe. 

"So are you two...?" he asks, pointing between Zach and a phantom presence, a face he won't conjure. But Zach gets his meaning.

"No," he says quietly. 

Chris is angry at how relieved he feels, that he feels relief at all, that his throat gets tight and he's got to bite down hard to keep from showing it.

"That sucks, man," he says, but he doesn't mean it, not at all. Zach's shrug is visible in his peripheral vision.

"Not as much as it should."

"So you figured you'd hop on a plane and bring your gloom and doom to my doorstep," Chris says with a shake of his head.

"Something like that."

There's a long silence.

"So, are you excited about the third movie?" Chris asks, which is lame, and Zach knows it's lame because he shakes his head and says, "Oh, _no_ ," and leans his elbows on his knees. 

"Why not?" Chris asks, in the manner of a bad high-school play, forcing his eyes wide. "The last one was pretty successful."

"Stop deflecting," Zach says, and fuck Zach's therapy talk, but Chris hangs his head. 

"It was your decision," Zach reminds him. 

Chris bites the inside of his lip until it hurts. 

"You'll make yourself bleed," Zach points out but too late, the copper tang's heavy in his mouth and turns his stomach. 

"You told me not to risk my career," Chris says hoarsely, tonguing his mouth where it throbs. 

"I was trying to do you a favor."

Chris looks at him then, eyes going awash, but fuck it. 

"Oh, is that what it was," he says. 

"Do you think this has been easy for me?" Zach snaps. "Knowing how you felt, and how I felt, do you think that any of this has been easy?"

Chris swipes at his eyes. 

"You were too chicken shit to find out if it would work," he spits.

"I didn't want to be something—"

"Because I _was willing_."

"—or rather some _one_ you learn to resent later in life, Christopher."

They're both quiet for a long time. Chris's chest heaves, and he sniffs once, twice, wipes his eyes again. 

"I know," he murmurs. He can barely say what comes next, the words half choked off. He sounds pathetic, he knows, but he can't bring himself to care. "And now?"

Zach's exhale is drawn out, unsteady. Chris watches his legs slide beside Chris's into the water. Their thighs almost touch; underwater, their ankles brush. Zach puts a hand on both of his knees. He doesn't say anything, but he nods, so Chris nods, and it's like he's seeing the sunlight for the first time today. He turns so he's looking at Zach's ear, reaches to pull off his sunglasses. He folds them and sets them down at a safe distance. Reaching up, he angles Zach's face toward his. 

"Yeah?" he asks, and he can smell Zach: his cologne, his fabric softener, that musky undercurrent because he's sweating in that ugly t-shirt. Chris can't smell the soil anymore. 

Zach kisses him as an answer, stubble rough against Chris's cheek, large hand curving to cradle the back of his head. Chris kisses Zach like he's made of oxygen, deeply, the pin-prick of tears in his eyes again, but that only makes him kiss harder. Zach makes a sound in the back of his throat, and that's it. Chris is done. He pulls Zach down onto the grass, arches up when Zach's hand slides under his shirt, to his ribcage, and holds him in place. Zach's body is a heavy, anchoring weight, and Zach is here. Zach is _here_. Zach is kissing him, and all of this—the months of silence, the search for anything to temporarily fill the Zach-shaped void in Chris's life—can stop.

"I'd move back," Zach whispers against his lips. "If you asked me, I'd move back."

"I wouldn't ask," Chris says earnestly.

"I know."


End file.
